It has occurred to me that I post only rarely these days. I can't explain exactly why, laziness I guess. I get pretty wrapped up in my little projects, as i'm sure most of you who read this blog already know. In that respect, it was a pretty busy week this past one.
My new project has been hammering smallish holes into largish rocks. I'm putting up a new rock climbing route. it will be one that no one else has done before, because I'm the idiot putting the bolts up there. There are three main branches of rock climbing; bouldering, traditional climbing and sport climbing.
In bouldering the object is to climb very short but very hard rock "problems" consisting of anywhere from 2 to 10 moves for the most part. In this variety of climbing one does not use any rope because you're usually only a few feet from the ground. If anything, you may opt for a "crash pad" to soften the landing area a bit.

Traditional climbing is regarded by most people as the most challenging mentally as it is the process by which silly humans scale rock surfaces and with the aid of a rope and specialized tools or "protection", they keep themselves from hitting the deck. Protection originally consisted of steel pitons hammered into cracks but recently has come to rely on easily removable "nuts" and "cams" which wedge into cracks and crevices to protect the climber. I don't do this type of climbing.

The last type is the most commonly practiced (at least in the US, Europe and Japan) which is commonly known as sport climbing. Sport climbing utilizes a rope, of course, as well as pre-placed anchors drilled and affixed to the rock. This allows for a more gymnastic and dynamic style of climbing, since the climber doesn't have to worry about putting in his or her own protection into the rock. Overall, this style of climbing is extremely safe, and compared with many other sports, has a relatively low injury rate. For reference ask my brother, he had his tooth crammed through his lip this past summer while playing a friendly match of soccer.

Anyway, this past week has seen me suspended on a rock face laboriously hand drilling holes in a basalt outcropping with an improvised hand-powered rock chisel. It has taken me about 1 hour per hole so far, but I'm looking to improve my rate with the purchase of a bigger hammer. Aside from smacking the back end of a carbide-tipped drill bit a thousand times, I could buy a battery powered hammer drill, unfortunately, they're somewhere in the range of $600-$1000. For now, I'll just kill my afternoons by smacking my thumb with a hammer 20 feet off the ground.